New music survey: P2P users buy the most, no one wants disconnection penalties

A new survey from the American Assembly, a research center at Columbia University, provides new insights about public opinion on file sharing and copyright enforcement. With support from Google, researchers Joe Karaganis and Lennart Renkema commissioned a public opinion survey to find out how consumers were getting their media and what their attitudes were toward a variety of copyright enforcement strategies.

Among the most significant findings: Americans overwhelmingly oppose the use of disconnection and rate-limiting as penalties for unauthorized file sharing. Also, the survey suggests users of peer-to-peer file-sharing software buy 30 percent more music than those who do not use peer-to-peer software.

The distinction between public and private sharing is central to Americans' thinking about the morality of file sharing. Eight in 10 Americans believe that it's OK to share copyrighted content with family members, and six in 10 extend the same logic to friends. But only a small minority of Americans—between four and 15 percent—say it's reasonable to upload copyrighted content for public consumption, post links to pirated content on Facebook, or sell unauthorized copies of copyrighted materials.

Unsurprisingly, young people tend to be friendlier to copying than older Americans. For example, 76 percent of Americans under 30 say it's reasonable to share content with friends, while only 51 percent of those over 65 think so. Only 13 percent of American Internet users use peer-to-peer file-sharing software overall, but 20 percent of adults under 30 do so.

While the survey was commissioned by Google, not all of the results will be to the Mountain View company's liking. A slight majority—53 percent—of Americans believe that search engines should "be required to block links to pirated music and videos online." Only 42 percent disagreed with that statement.

File sharers buy more music

There is a perennial debate in tech policy circles about whether peer-to-peer file sharing reduces the market for music and other creative content. It's obvious why those who download pirated files from peer-to-peer networks might purchase less content through legitimate channels. But some scholars argue file sharing can make it easier for fans to find new content they like, broadening their tastes and causing them to buy more music in the long run.

The survey provides some limited support for the view that file sharing promotes, rather than hinders, legitimate music purchases. The average American on a peer-to-peer network has a music library of almost 2,000 songs. Of these, 760 (38 percent) are reported to be legitimately purchased. In contrast, those who say they are not P2P users (but do collect digital music files) have an average library size of 1,300 songs. Of those, 582 (roughly 45 percent) were purchased from legitimate sources. Most of the others were ripped from CDs or copied from friends and family.

So as we might expect, a larger fraction of the music collections of non-P2P users come from legitimate sources. However, in absolute terms P2P users buy more legitimate music than those who have amassed digital music collections without using peer-to-peer software.

Of course, correlation is not causation. It's possible, for example, the most avid music fans are also the most likely to be drawn to peer-to-peer networks. Perhaps without those networks they would have purchased even more music from legitimate services. But at a minimum, it's an important reminder many heavy P2P users are also heavy consumers of music from legitimate channels.

Cultural differences

Karaganis and Renkema commissioned surveys in both the United States and Germany, allowing comparisons to be drawn between the two countries. The survey results were broadly similar between the countries, with a few notable differences. Germans generally express higher support for efforts to enforce copyright. For example, 59 percent of Germans believe that unauthorized downloading of a song or movie should be punishable, while just 52 percent of Americans agree. However, Germans are privacy zealots, with 71 percent opposing Internet monitoring to prevent infringement, two points higher than Americans.

The survey results also suggest Germans have been slower to adopt new technology than Americans. In the United States in 2011, 14 percent of consumers had an e-book reader and 10 percent of consumers had a tablet. In Germany, the corresponding figures were 2 percent and 4 percent. There is also a large disparity in pay television subscriptions.

Physical formats are still king in Germany. An impressive 82 percent of music revenue is attributable to physical formats such as the CD. In contrast, physical formats now account for less than half of recorded music revenue in the United States.

Because Germany has a more extensive system of publicly funded television content, only 49 percent of Germans subscribe to a pay TV service, compared with 82 percent of Americans. In America 13 percent of consumers (including 29 percent of those under 30) get "most or all" of their music from a streaming service such as Pandora or Spotify. Only 2 percent of German consumers (9 percent of those under 30) rely on a streaming music service.

How come in these surveys there's never a distinction made between current music and "old music from the 60s and 70s"? Copyright term is never questioned and is assumed to not be a factor in determining if it's OK to share or not.

2) Surveys show a very strong trend towards socially accepted behavior in excess of what is actually observed, and against identifying with groups which are negatively presented to the population. For instance, surveys of weekly church attendance will have twice as many respondents claim to show up to church as actually show up to church on a weekly basis. Likewise, surveys of gun owners over-represent the use of firearms in self defense by a full order of magnitude. Finally, while 15-20% of the population of the United States will tell you that they do not believe in any sort of deity, only 2% will tell you they are atheists if they are asked. Numbers regarding what is seen as socially acceptable behavior is likely to be exaggerated, any behavior which is seen as particularly desirable is likely to be vastly exaggerated, and any group which is perceived in a negative manner is likely to be underrepresented.

3) The survey makes no attempt to correlate actual behavior with reported behavior. Indeed, they only claim, based on the result of -another- survey (which was improperly averaged to boot) that piracy is not underreported, which is obviously stupid. This is just a terrible flaw when you're actually trying to determine real behavioral patterns, and suggests a lack of understanding of proper methodology.

4) The way in which you ask questions, and even the order in which you ask them, can have a very large impact on the answers you receive. This report does NOT list the exact questions asked, nor does it mention how it asked the questions or in what order, or if the order was randomized. This is incredibly bad, and deeply suspect: without that, you have no way of knowing whether the poll was conducted properly, and whether the questions were written correctly.

Unfortunately, this renders the entire survey completely without meaning. Not that it will stop people who are unfamiliar with proper survey techniques and statistics, especially ones with agendas, from picking up and running this story, and tons of ignorant folk citing it as support for their arguments for or against piracy.

It would be nice for someone to actually do a real behavioral study of people's habits, but I suspect few people engaged in illegal activity would actually acquiesce to it, and without a random sample, its kind of pointless.

How come in these surveys there's never a distinction made between current music and "old music from the 60s and 70s"? Copyright term is never questioned and is assumed to not be a factor in determining if it's OK to share or not.

The most pirated files are always recent files, not old ones. The older it is, the less pirated it tends to be, and the leading item is always something new and recent - big summer blockbusters, new CDs, ect.

I know this isn't the main point of the article, but it's probably worth pointing out that the situation in Germany is quite different from the US when it comes to streaming. Specifically, music streaming at acceptable terms has only arrived at some point during the last year (I think Qriocity was the first one I used), while the first acceptable video streaming service (meaning roughly the same functionality as Hulu+Mobile) only arrived THIS MONTH (in the form of Watchever). So, you're bound to get very different results when you're asking Germans about streaming

Among the most significant findings: Americans overwhelmingly oppose the use of disconnection and rate-limiting as penalties for unauthorized file sharing. Also, the survey suggests users of peer-to-peer file-sharing software buy 30 percent more music than those who do not use peer-to-peer software.

Among the most significant findings: Americans overwhelmingly oppose the use of disconnection and rate-limiting as penalties for unauthorized file sharing. Also, the survey suggests users of peer-to-peer file-sharing software buy 30 percent more music than those who do not use peer-to-peer software.

Any correlation between the two?

Unfortunately, the presentation of the survey is quite terrible, as I noted in my post. It is not presented in a scientific manner and is more or less entirely worthless as a result. This could potentially suggest dishonesty or lack of integrity on the part of the writers of the report, or it may simply be the result of lack of knowledge of scientific or statistical rigor necessary to run such surveys - which of course bodes poorly for the validity of the results either way.

There's a reason that the polling agencies present their results the way they do in their actual reports - to remove any possibility of bias, or at least any possibility of hiding any sort of methodological error.

The most pirated files are always recent files, not old ones. The older it is, the less pirated it tends to be, and the leading item is always something new and recent - big summer blockbusters, new CDs, ect.

This is for two reasons:

1) The older it is, the more likely you are to already have it.

2) There is increased interest in new things compared to old things.

I think overall popularity/piracy rates have more to do with quality and appeal of the material, especially after the initial novelty demand is satisfied.

The most pirated files are always recent files, not old ones. The older it is, the less pirated it tends to be, and the leading item is always something new and recent - big summer blockbusters, new CDs, ect.

This is for two reasons:

1) The older it is, the more likely you are to already have it.

2) There is increased interest in new things compared to old things.

I think overall popularity/piracy rates have more to do with quality and appeal of the material, especially after the initial novelty demand is satisfied.

I don't know where you obtained the numbers you cited, but a quick—and unscientific—look at swarm sizes reported by a couple of public trackers seems to indicate new releases of anything are quite popular, but the activity level decays rapidly. Many collections of older material are quite active, and have been so for years.

Some examples: The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Johny Cash, anything in the Law & Order universe, and anything related to Star Wars, Star Trek, or from Tolkien.

It seems to me to be a gross oversimplification to categorically say that anything not new is not popular.

How come in these surveys there's never a distinction made between current music and "old music from the 60s and 70s"? Copyright term is never questioned and is assumed to not be a factor in determining if it's OK to share or not.

The most pirated files are always recent files, not old ones. The older it is, the less pirated it tends to be, and the leading item is always something new and recent - big summer blockbusters, new CDs, ect.

This is for two reasons:

1) The older it is, the more likely you are to already have it.

2) There is increased interest in new things compared to old things.

That's why I sometimes refer to P2P as the "popularity protocol" because it really hits it's stride the more people downloading (and uploading) at the same time. Worse case is a one to one, were FTP would be faster.

As Titanium Dragon has already pointed out, the survey is invalid, but its validity might have never been the main point of it.

I believe this is a play on Google's part. They were already no doubt aware of what kind of answers they'd get - they are the greatest data miners in the world, after all - but they might be trying to garner public support for whatever moves they intend to make with regards to censorship.

Once enough articles start claiming that a majority is in favor of X or Y, a self-fulfilling prophecy is born. The majority of people do not want to have the unpopular opinion.

I download PC games left and right. I want to try them all. The majority get maybe 30 minutes of my time, some I really like I play all the way through. I pirate them all, well the ones I want to check out anyway.

There was one game that I couldn't pirate, Diablo 3, which I did buy at release, and wish I hadn't. If I would have been able to pirate that game it would never have been bought by me. I felt cheated, but then again I am a pirate so I am used to doing things my way.

Here I will note that I buy many more games than anyone I know in real life. I have a Steam collection that has over 100 games, and 90% of those games are ones I pirated, loved, and wanted to own. When I was younger I had a closet full of retail boxes I bought, and wound up collecting.

Same thing goes for music, well it did. Throughout my teens and into my early twenties I spent more money buying cd's than I spent on anything else. That grew old though, because I got sick of buying cd's to get 1-3 songs I liked and 10 more I did not. My wife and I had a collection approaching 1000 discs before we quit buying them.

What is my message? I'm not sure, but I can tell you this: I hate buying things that turn out to not be worth my money. I like to know what I am getting myself into before I commit to buying these days. Piracy is many times my only option, and in my case, piracy keeps my money out of undeserving pockets, and the companies who I feel have given me an experience I value, they are the ones who get the cash.

Capitalism at it's finest if you ask me. The companies who make quality works get my cash, and the ones who who make trash get nothing. Me? I get what I want too, because I know what I am paying for. Piracy is a way of life for me. Piracy, and Netflix.

Opinion polls have same problem. There are opinions that people are less likely to admit, so you could as well call opinion polls useless for the same reason.

Titanium Dragon wrote:

2) Surveys show a very strong trend towards socially accepted behavior in excess of what is actually observed, and against identifying with groups which are negatively presented to the population. For instance, surveys of weekly church attendance will have twice as many respondents claim to show up to church as actually show up to church on a weekly basis. Likewise, surveys of gun owners over-represent the use of firearms in self defense by a full order of magnitude. Finally, while 15-20% of the population of the United States will tell you that they do not believe in any sort of deity, only 2% will tell you they are atheists if they are asked. Numbers regarding what is seen as socially acceptable behavior is likely to be exaggerated, any behavior which is seen as particularly desirable is likely to be vastly exaggerated, and any group which is perceived in a negative manner is likely to be underrepresented.

And surveys show that people are more likely to admit socially acceptable opinions. That believing in dieity in US is a example of it, as it isn't behaviour but opinion.

Titanium Dragon wrote:

3) The survey makes no attempt to correlate actual behavior with reported behavior. Indeed, they only claim, based on the result of -another- survey (which was improperly averaged to boot) that piracy is not underreported, which is obviously stupid. This is just a terrible flaw when you're actually trying to determine real behavioral patterns, and suggests a lack of understanding of proper methodology.

You can't correlate actual behaviour with reported behaviour, as the subject under check will no doubt change his behaviour to match reported behaviour, if it differs.

Titanium Dragon wrote:

4) The way in which you ask questions, and even the order in which you ask them, can have a very large impact on the answers you receive. This report does NOT list the exact questions asked, nor does it mention how it asked the questions or in what order, or if the order was randomized. This is incredibly bad, and deeply suspect: without that, you have no way of knowing whether the poll was conducted properly, and whether the questions were written correctly.

We have no proof that it wasn't conducted properly either.

Titanium Dragon wrote:

Unfortunately, this renders the entire survey completely without meaning. Not that it will stop people who are unfamiliar with proper survey techniques and statistics, especially ones with agendas, from picking up and running this story, and tons of ignorant folk citing it as support for their arguments for or against piracy.

And tons of folk will dismiss and badmouth this survey when it doesn't go along their world view, claiming it was badly done, has no worth, methodology was flaved etc, entirely without proof.

Titanium Dragon wrote:

It would be nice for someone to actually do a real behavioral study of people's habits, but I suspect few people engaged in illegal activity would actually acquiesce to it, and without a random sample, its kind of pointless.

I wonder if there is any need. This isn't the first research that has come to this conclusion. The research on the subject is surprisingly homogenic, all say, even older ones when the opinion on p2p was more acceptable that p2p people buy more media. That drops the "unethical behaviour may color results" problem off the map.

What they should research is if correlation is causation. That would be surpricingly easy to check, just compare download dates to purchase dates. If first download date precedes first purchase date of the media, p2p has provable positive effect.

I don't know where you obtained the numbers you cited, but a quick—and unscientific—look at swarm sizes reported by a couple of public trackers seems to indicate new releases of anything are quite popular, but the activity level decays rapidly. Many collections of older material are quite active, and have been so for years.

Some examples: The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Johny Cash, anything in the Law & Order universe, and anything related to Star Wars, Star Trek, or from Tolkien.

It seems to me to be a gross oversimplification to categorically say that anything not new is not popular.

Which is why I didn't say that. However, it is worth noting that all of these things are not really "of the past" in the first place. Were they created a long time ago? Yes. But they are still being advertised and sold and heavily promoted to this day.

The Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Johnny Cash are all all over the radio. Law & Order is still on TV. Star Trek is still on TV. Another Tolkien based movie just came out.

Star Wars is the only real outlier there, but even it still is regularly shown on movie channels.

Stuff which is still advertised and sold is the stuff that is most pirated. Obscure shows from the 50s aren't the primary topic of streams, and make up only a miniscule amount of piracy.

However, all of these are dwarfed by new releases. I know that the summer Thor came out, it was the #1 most pirated file in terms of absolute number of downloads; summer blockbusters regularly are.

The reality is that advertisement probably drives both purchases and illegal downloads, so the idea that piracy is used to keep "old stuff alive" is mostly pretty silly - while piracy IS used to do that, it makes up a negligible fraction of actual piracy.

@Redo From Start

Please read my entire post before you try to break it up and answer it point by point, as several of your points were already answered by my post.

Quote:

You can't correlate actual behaviour with reported behaviour, as the subject under check will no doubt change his behaviour to match reported behaviour, if it differs.

Actually this is done all the time, as with the church attendance surveys.

Quote:

We have no proof that it wasn't conducted properly either.

We have no proof that there isn't a teacup floating around between the orbit of the Earth and Venus, but that doesn't mean that I believe it exists. If you make an assertion, you require evidence to back it up. They made assertions here without providing evidence to back them up.

Quote:

And tons of folk will dismiss and badmouth this survey when it doesn't go along their world view, claiming it was badly done, has no worth, methodology was flaved etc, entirely without proof.

Had you ever taken a class in statistics, you would be saying the same thing. Anyone with any statistical knowledge or knowledge of proper survey technique would instantly mark the mistakes they made here. Any proper scientist would.

Quote:

I wonder if there is any need. This isn't the first research that has come to this conclusion. The research on the subject is surprisingly homogenic, all say, even older ones when the opinion on p2p was more acceptable that p2p people buy more media. That drops the "unethical behaviour may color results" problem off the map.

This is a blatant lie. There have been studies which have shown the exact opposite.

Quote:

What they should research is if correlation is causation. That would be surpricingly easy to check, just compare download dates to purchase dates. If first download date precedes first purchase date of the media, p2p has provable positive effect.

In the few studies which have done this, it has been shown that the vast majority of pirated content is never purchased. So this would suggest an extremely strong negative effect, and indeed is how the MPAA/RIAA arrive at their extremely large loss numbers - all the people who download stuff and never buy it. Of course, because they want to maximize perceived damage they say there is a 1:1 ratio of pirated material:material that went unpurchased due to piracy, which is false.

Opinion polls have same problem. There are opinions that people are less likely to admit, so you could as well call opinion polls useless for the same reason.

Titanium Dragon wrote:

2) Surveys show a very strong trend towards socially accepted behavior in excess of what is actually observed, and against identifying with groups which are negatively presented to the population. For instance, surveys of weekly church attendance will have twice as many respondents claim to show up to church as actually show up to church on a weekly basis. Likewise, surveys of gun owners over-represent the use of firearms in self defense by a full order of magnitude. Finally, while 15-20% of the population of the United States will tell you that they do not believe in any sort of deity, only 2% will tell you they are atheists if they are asked. Numbers regarding what is seen as socially acceptable behavior is likely to be exaggerated, any behavior which is seen as particularly desirable is likely to be vastly exaggerated, and any group which is perceived in a negative manner is likely to be underrepresented.

And surveys show that people are more likely to admit socially acceptable opinions. That believing in dieity in US is a example of it, as it isn't behaviour but opinion.

Titanium Dragon wrote:

3) The survey makes no attempt to correlate actual behavior with reported behavior. Indeed, they only claim, based on the result of -another- survey (which was improperly averaged to boot) that piracy is not underreported, which is obviously stupid. This is just a terrible flaw when you're actually trying to determine real behavioral patterns, and suggests a lack of understanding of proper methodology.

You can't correlate actual behaviour with reported behaviour, as the subject under check will no doubt change his behaviour to match reported behaviour, if it differs.

Titanium Dragon wrote:

4) The way in which you ask questions, and even the order in which you ask them, can have a very large impact on the answers you receive. This report does NOT list the exact questions asked, nor does it mention how it asked the questions or in what order, or if the order was randomized. This is incredibly bad, and deeply suspect: without that, you have no way of knowing whether the poll was conducted properly, and whether the questions were written correctly.

We have no proof that it wasn't conducted properly either.

Titanium Dragon wrote:

Unfortunately, this renders the entire survey completely without meaning. Not that it will stop people who are unfamiliar with proper survey techniques and statistics, especially ones with agendas, from picking up and running this story, and tons of ignorant folk citing it as support for their arguments for or against piracy.

And tons of folk will dismiss and badmouth this survey when it doesn't go along their world view, claiming it was badly done, has no worth, methodology was flaved etc, entirely without proof.

Titanium Dragon wrote:

It would be nice for someone to actually do a real behavioral study of people's habits, but I suspect few people engaged in illegal activity would actually acquiesce to it, and without a random sample, its kind of pointless.

I wonder if there is any need. This isn't the first research that has come to this conclusion. The research on the subject is surprisingly homogenic, all say, even older ones when the opinion on p2p was more acceptable that p2p people buy more media. That drops the "unethical behaviour may color results" problem off the map.

What they should research is if correlation is causation. That would be surpricingly easy to check, just compare download dates to purchase dates. If first download date precedes first purchase date of the media, p2p has provable positive effect.

If anyone says that any surveys/polls conducted cannot be reliable and that they are flawed and not accurate etc. and that this survey isn't reliable etc. then these same people will also have to agree that the surveys carried out by the MPAA/RIAA etc. with regards to piracy, file sharing of copyright etc. are also not reliable, flawed and not accurate.

People cannot fault surveys conducted by one side with the reason that surveys are not reliable etc. and then state that the surveys carried out by the other side are reliable and accurate.

I don't know where you obtained the numbers you cited, but a quick—and unscientific—look at swarm sizes reported by a couple of public trackers seems to indicate new releases of anything are quite popular, but the activity level decays rapidly. Many collections of older material are quite active, and have been so for years.

Some examples: The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Johny Cash, anything in the Law & Order universe, and anything related to Star Wars, Star Trek, or from Tolkien.

It seems to me to be a gross oversimplification to categorically say that anything not new is not popular.

Which is why I didn't say that. However, it is worth noting that all of these things are not really "of the past" in the first place.

This is nothing new. Industry simply ignores these studies. So do lawmakers lobbied by industry.

From 2007:

"Among Canadians who engage in P2P file-sharing, our results suggest that for every 12 P2P downloaded songs, music purchases increase by 0.44 CDs. That is, downloading the equivalent of approximately one CD increases purchasing by about half of a CD."

If anyone says that any surveys/polls conducted cannot be reliable and that they are flawed and not accurate etc. and that this survey isn't reliable etc. then these same people will also have to agree that the surveys carried out by the MPAA/RIAA etc. with regards to piracy, file sharing of copyright etc. are also not reliable, flawed and not accurate.

People cannot fault surveys conducted by one side with the reason that surveys are not reliable etc. and then state that the surveys carried out by the other side are reliable and accurate.

Without the questions being presented in the report, it is very difficult to trust that a survey was conducted properly. An example of a report that shows what you're supposed to do is:

If you skip to the end, it shows the actual question they asked. You'll notice that they actually even randomize the order of items, which is done to prevent bias (as even the order you ask questions in can affect the responses; by randomizing them, you ensure that the order is less of a factor).

JEDIDIAH wrote:

Your movement of the goalposts is duly noted.

Firstly, I did not move the goal posts. What are the most downloaded things?

New stuff. Did that change? No. To move the goalposts I must change my answer to suit that; however, I still stand by the previous answer. What was the most downloaded movie the summer Thor came out? Thor. Not Aliens, not Star Wars. Thor. If that answer doesn't change, then I didn't move the goalposts.

You need to learn the definition of words.

Either that or you just were hoping no one would notice you were lying.

paradox00 wrote:

Worthless study.

The same methodology used in that study can be used to suggest that storks deliver babies. They failed to prove their assertion at all because of a lack of a casual link. They suggested that the people who have the most technology both download the most music and buy the most CDs, but they failed to prove the assertion that downloading music increased CD sales.

Please read my entire post before you try to break it up and answer it point by point, as several of your points were already answered by my post.

Read it twice. Didn't get any better second time.

Titanium Dragon wrote:

Quote:

You can't correlate actual behaviour with reported behaviour, as the subject under check will no doubt change his behaviour to match reported behaviour, if it differs.

Actually this is done all the time, as with the church attendance surveys.

My comment was in context of this survey, where it is impossible. You can check how many people go to church without their co-operation, but you can't check how much they load with p2p without their co-operation. And whoever gives it can change their behaviour after giving permission as much as changing the surveyable history. Ergo, you can't check actual p2p behaviour.

Titanium Dragon wrote:

Quote:

We have no proof that it wasn't conducted properly either.

We have no proof that there isn't a teacup floating around between the orbit of the Earth and Venus, but that doesn't mean that I believe it exists. If you make an assertion, you require evidence to back it up. They made assertions here without providing evidence to back them up.

And we have no proof that sun will raise in morning. Or that this survey wasn't flawed as you claim. You just tell that there isn't proof that wasn't. Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence.

Titanium Dragon wrote:

Quote:

And tons of folk will dismiss and badmouth this survey when it doesn't go along their world view, claiming it was badly done, has no worth, methodology was flaved etc, entirely without proof.

Had you ever taken a class in statistics, you would be saying the same thing. Anyone with any statistical knowledge or knowledge of proper survey technique would instantly mark the mistakes they made here. Any proper scientist would.

Had you understood as much as the classes of statistics as I did, you wouldn't be making these claims. You haven't seen or shown any mistakes. You claim that there may be mistakes in questioning, question order etc. But you haven't shown any mistakes.

It isn't that peculiar that summary is released first, and then the methology, questioneers etc, that one could criticize a study for it. Often it may tkaes years before the data is released to general public for scrutiny.

Titanium Dragon wrote:

Quote:

I wonder if there is any need. This isn't the first research that has come to this conclusion. The research on the subject is surprisingly homogenic, all say, even older ones when the opinion on p2p was more acceptable that p2p people buy more media. That drops the "unethical behaviour may color results" problem off the map.

This is a blatant lie. There have been studies which have shown the exact opposite.

I haven't seen any that have come to exact opposite. Care to give a link to them. Also could you scrutinize their methodology, questioneers, unethical behavior etc.

Titanium Dragon wrote:

Quote:

What they should research is if correlation is causation. That would be surpricingly easy to check, just compare download dates to purchase dates. If first download date precedes first purchase date of the media, p2p has provable positive effect.

In the few studies which have done this, it has been shown that the vast majority of pirated content is never purchased. So this would suggest an extremely strong negative effect, and indeed is how the MPAA/RIAA arrive at their extremely large loss numbers - all the people who download stuff and never buy it. Of course, because they want to maximize perceived damage they say there is a 1:1 ratio of pirated material:material that went unpurchased due to piracy, which is false.

Actually no RIAA/MPAA study have been able to show that pirating content has hurt sales. They would have to show that the content would have been purchased if it wasn't pirated. It is rather easy to prove that the premis of downloaded content equals lost sales, as often the individual downloading content hasn't that much income that he could have purchased all the content.

But if you wan't to check out some completely made up figures, you hit pay dirt with RIAA/MPAA loss figures. They have no grounds in reality, the quoteed figures are completely made up. It is a good example of telling a lie enough times it becomes thruth, as they lose the history. One of them was figure that was invented during interview when journalist wanted a sum for article. The figure was invented in 5 secs and then it started circulating and lived for years, without anybody knowing where it really came, and how idiotic it was.

Which is why I didn't say that. However, it is worth noting that all of these things are not really "of the past" in the first place. Were they created a long time ago? Yes. But they are still being advertised and sold and heavily promoted to this day.

The Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Johnny Cash are all all over the radio. Law & Order is still on TV. Star Trek is still on TV. Another Tolkien based movie just came out.

Star Wars is the only real outlier there, but even it still is regularly shown on movie channels.

So, it's not of the past because it's still present today? That's just plain stupid. Shakespeare is still performed regularly today probably more than any living playwright, but he is undeniably of the past.

Quote:

Stuff which is still advertised and sold is the stuff that is most pirated. Obscure shows from the 50s aren't the primary topic of streams, and make up only a miniscule amount of piracy.

And that's relevant how? Popular stuff is popular. It takes a real rocket scientist to figure that out. However, it's also worth noting that stuff of the past that is still popular because of reasons other than marketing. If anything, it's the other way around. There is still some degree of marketing because these things continue to sell.

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However, all of these are dwarfed by new releases. I know that the summer Thor came out, it was the #1 most pirated file in terms of absolute number of downloads; summer blockbusters regularly are.

The reality is that advertisement probably drives both purchases and illegal downloads, so the idea that piracy is used to keep "old stuff alive" is mostly pretty silly - while piracy IS used to do that, it makes up a negligible fraction of actual piracy.

You aren't really using a decent methodology at all. The flavor of the month is number one, but that doesn't mean that p2p consists practically of only new works. There are 4.4 million torrents on TPB. You could therefore have the top 100 covered so long as that content makes up more than 0.0023%. It's important to note how long a work is on top and by how much, and those are complex metrics. Although much more difficult to determine, it's also worth considering that there a number of hoarders who will download absolutely everything they can within a certain field of interest. These aren't a reasonable consideration for having any effect on the market since these people don't even use the majority of what they download.

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This is a blatant lie. There have been studies which have shown the exact opposite.

Care to cite them, then?

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In the few studies which have done this, it has been shown that the vast majority of pirated content is never purchased. So this would suggest an extremely strong negative effect, and indeed is how the MPAA/RIAA arrive at their extremely large loss numbers - all the people who download stuff and never buy it. Of course, because they want to maximize perceived damage they say there is a 1:1 ratio of pirated material:material that went unpurchased due to piracy, which is false.

No, it doesn't. You need reading comprehension because you completely lack it here. If I download 20 songs and buy 3, that's more positive than someone who downloads 0 and buys 1. Now, the ratio for the second person is higher, but the absolute gains are higher for he former. The infringement to buying ratio doesn't matter at all. What matters is absolute sales.

Your commentary on the Kim Dotcom MEGA series and other copyright/piracy related articles has proven unpopular around Ars, but you write eloquently and your arguments are well based and thought out.

May I ask why, personally, you appear so against piracy? Do you feel it negatively effects more than just the copyright holders and artist?

For many people the argument isn't only that of piracy, but Their Rights vs Our Rights. Their being the political-corporate figures that enforce copyright. It has already been shown how copyright can be used to censor free speech. Is increased network monitoring, rouge international treaties, propagation of consumer rights restricting DRM, widespread collusion between private and federal agencies in favor of more corporate rights and copyright, worth protecting a small percentage of already millionaires property?

I know this isn't the main point of the article, but it's probably worth pointing out that the situation in Germany is quite different from the US when it comes to streaming. Specifically, music streaming at acceptable terms has only arrived at some point during the last year (I think Qriocity was the first one I used), while the first acceptable video streaming service (meaning roughly the same functionality as Hulu+Mobile) only arrived THIS MONTH (in the form of Watchever). So, you're bound to get very different results when you're asking Germans about streaming

This.

Europe pirates more because they consume massive amounts of American crap, and American companies are fucking stupid and don't give them easy ways to get it. I do the same as an American. I get all of my content legally if I can, and pirate if I can't. Just recently I was watching Dexter. I bought up to season 6 through Amazon. Got to season 7 and lo-and-behold, it isn't offered. I cursed, and just found someone who was streaming it. I feel absolutely no guilt about pirating something that isn't available for general consumption.

The entertainment industry needs to surrender. If you try and do exclusive content so that people need a fucking cable box or to be subscribed to one particular service to get your stuff, people will just pirate it and feel absolutely no remorse. Now, offering your stuff quickly and non-exclusively isn't going to end all piracy, but it will certainly kill casual pirates like me. I would much rather just pay a few bucks and get what I want quickly and cleanly. I prefer to pay. You just have to give me a reasonable option. Failing that, like a lot of folks in my generation, I have the technical capacity to go ahead and take what I want if you fail to sell it.

Don't be stupid. Just offer the goods at a reasonable price through reasonable mediums. If you go the exclusive rout, I hope the channel you are using paid big up front, because you just threw the door open for every casual pirate in the world, literally.

On the legitimacy of survey methods in general: Titanium Dragon is right to be skeptical of surveys but wrong to dismiss them altogether as a means of studying behavior. We discuss the limitations of survey work repeatedly in the study. For some types of questions, they are a rough guide at best. But if you're interested in understanding a wide range of behavior, there aren't many alternatives to asking people what they do. There are different ways to do this, each with pros and cons. And yes, to the extent possible, these should be supplemented by analysis of other data and methods. In our case, this involves a lot of discussion of other surveys and market data.

Re underreporting of unethical behavior. Titanium Dragon misreads our section on this. We say that there is almost certainly underreporting, that we have no means of measuring it, and that our best guess is that it's pretty modest--drawing on an Ofcom study which measured the difference in responses across different modes of surveying--phone, email, and face-to-face. This isn't definitive either, but the Ofcom study does not simply average its results. It's a reasonable set of estimates based on differences in the composition of the survey panels.

Contra Titanium Dragon (again), we repeatedly recognize and discuss issues of volatility related to question language and order. If TD would like to learn more about this, he can find our 'top line results,' which lists the questions and responses, and the cross tabs, and the dataset itself available below the survey. Perhaps this will put to rest his concerns that it is "incredibly bad, and deeply suspect" to not have done this.

Still, skepticism on this point is generally a good thing: this is a field dominated by commercial research firms which don't release full results or any of the underlying work. We've been advocates of the gold standard on this, and have followed it here.

If TD is eager to read a very different type of behavioral study of piracy, he's welcome to take a look at Media Piracy in Emerging Economies. No surveys at all in that one.

Another detail… Contra Tim Lee's otherwise excellent overview, Google did not 'commission' the study. We proposed it and they provided a research grant with the understanding that we would do it. That may seem like a fine point, but in practice it meant that they took a completely hands off approach. We have opinions, and some of these are visible in the analysis, but you can be your own judge as to whether the analysis follows an 'agenda' or--as best we could--the data. In my view the results do not paint a particularly Google friendly view of the world, but whether they do or not was not our concern.

2) Surveys show a very strong trend towards socially accepted behavior in excess of what is actually observed, and against identifying with groups which are negatively presented to the population. For instance, surveys of weekly church attendance will have twice as many respondents claim to show up to church as actually show up to church on a weekly basis. Likewise, surveys of gun owners over-represent the use of firearms in self defense by a full order of magnitude. Finally, while 15-20% of the population of the United States will tell you that they do not believe in any sort of deity, only 2% will tell you they are atheists if they are asked. Numbers regarding what is seen as socially acceptable behavior is likely to be exaggerated, any behavior which is seen as particularly desirable is likely to be vastly exaggerated, and any group which is perceived in a negative manner is likely to be underrepresented.

...

It would be nice for someone to actually do a real behavioral study of people's habits, but I suspect few people engaged in illegal activity would actually acquiesce to it, and without a random sample, its kind of pointless.

What I find interesting (though not surprising) is that there is a huge discrepancy between what is legal and what is socially acceptable. Copyright infringement is clearly illegal under current laws, yet "Eight in 10 Americans believe that it's OK to share copyrighted content with family members". That's 80% of the population reporting on a survey that they support violating the law.

Why is this interesting:Copyright infringement is a classic example of a behavior that is "malum prohibitum" (wrong because it's prohibited, as opposed to "malum in se", which is wrong in itself). It's a behavior that is not inherently wrong, yet is prohibited despite 80% thinking it is acceptable (at least in some cases).

It also doesn't surprise me at all that this survey shows that p2p pirates also buy more legitimate content (in absolute terms). The biggest consumers of media don't want their media consumption to be limited by their finances, yet most understand that if nobody pays for media, it won't get created. Spending becomes more a "vote" rather than a "purchase".

In my experience, pirates don't feel morally obligated to pay for a copy of anything (since copies are easy to produce) but they do have a desire to encourage the production of the content they like, and are often willing to spend money to do so. Downloading and trying a lot of different content is seen in a sense as a means to become a more informed voter in the economic/cultural election. It's a way to make sure you're giving your vote (money) to the people who deserve it the most.

Sure, there are some people out there who are just freeloaders, but I think most people (at least, once they have sufficient disposable income) are happy to have a voice in what gets created and support those who make their favorite content.

Europe pirates more because they consume massive amounts of American crap, and American companies are fucking stupid and don't give them easy ways to get it. I do the same as an American. I get all of my content legally if I can, and pirate if I can't. Just recently I was watching Dexter. I bought up to season 6 through Amazon. Got to season 7 and lo-and-behold, it isn't offered. I cursed, and just found someone who was streaming it.

I would like to note that they just finished airing season 7 and we can’t get it from Amazon in the US either.

My comment was in context of this survey, where it is impossible. You can check how many people go to church without their co-operation, but you can't check how much they load with p2p without their co-operation. And whoever gives it can change their behaviour after giving permission as much as changing the surveyable history. Ergo, you can't check actual p2p behaviour.

Oh, you could. Or rather, the government could thanks to their warrantless wiretapping.

There are a few other ways around this. One would be to monitor the IPs of everyone connecting to numerous sources of your content, and then compare them to the IPs of people who purchase the game and register it. While a crude metric, this could give you some idea, and will get better as more people get unique IPv6 addresses. Another way is to simply look at downloads vs sales, which is very crude, but effective - if you know how many people purchased your game legally by such a date, and know how many people pirated it by such a date, you can put a bound on the number of people who pirated it and later purchased it vs the number of people who purchased it.

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And we have no proof that sun will raise in morning. Or that this survey wasn't flawed as you claim. You just tell that there isn't proof that wasn't. Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence.

And here you demonstrate your utter fanaticism.

Firstly, yes, we do know that the Sun will rise in the morning - the Earth's revolution around its own axis is not changing at any sort of rate sufficient to prevent it, the Sun is still shining over Australia, there is nothing which will prevent it from doing so, no evidence that it will behave abnormally, and it has done so a trillion times or so in the past.

So yes, we do have a great deal of evidence that the Sun will rise in the morning. Conversely, we have no evidence that suggests that this survey was conducted properly.

It is your responsibility to provide evidence for your assertions.

No scientist would ever say something like that.

And for the record, the whole "absence of evidence" thing is not applicable here - failing to include basic information which is standard from reliable surveys actually IS evidence of absence of something, whether it be standard methods, or of honesty.

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Had you understood as much as the classes of statistics as I did, you wouldn't be making these claims. You haven't seen or shown any mistakes. You claim that there may be mistakes in questioning, question order etc. But you haven't shown any mistakes.

It isn't that peculiar that summary is released first, and then the methology, questioneers etc, that one could criticize a study for it. Often it may tkaes years before the data is released to general public for scrutiny.

They did not give any evidence to support their assertions. Most of the time, they do at least release the questions they ask for the very reasons I noted. While detailed data is not always released immediately (though it is sometimes, particularly in good surveys, and it lends additional strength to your arguments - the more disclosure you give, the better evidence you have provided).

Had you really taken years of statistics, you would know all this. Either you are not behaving objectively, or you are lying for your own benefit, probably to protect your world view.

You have said absolutely nothing which suggests any sort of background in statistics, however.

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I haven't seen any that have come to exact opposite. Care to give a link to them. Also could you scrutinize their methodology, questioneers, unethical behavior etc.

So what you're saying is not only that you are ignorant, but that you are willfully ignorant.

If you have a background in statistics, you should be able to criticize those on your own. And let's leave aside the obvious one of the RIAA funding it; Google funded this one, and Google has incentive to state that piracy is not bad because it is an enabler of it, so yes, they obviously have incentives to lie for their bosses.

Look for actual methodological flaws.

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Actually no RIAA/MPAA study have been able to show that pirating content has hurt sales. They would have to show that the content would have been purchased if it wasn't pirated. It is rather easy to prove that the premis of downloaded content equals lost sales, as often the individual downloading content hasn't that much income that he could have purchased all the content.

The problem is of course, if they lack the income, then if they could not download it they would be incentivized to work more so that they could afford such things, rather than leeching off of society.

And calling their numbers completely made up is not really reasonable. The question is primarily in the interpretation of the numbers; it is without a doubt that some segments of the entertainment industry have been economically impacted over the last 15-20 years. The question is whether you can attribute it to piracy or not.

kngbnu wrote:

So, it's not of the past because it's still present today? That's just plain stupid. Shakespeare is still performed regularly today probably more than any living playwright, but he is undeniably of the past.

The point was (which you seem to have clearly missed) piracy mirrors what people watch in other media. It reflects overall societal demand.

xryancat wrote:

May I ask why, personally, you appear so against piracy? Do you feel it negatively effects more than just the copyright holders and artist?

Well, firstly, I like to argue. This is perhaps obvious, but perhaps not; most people don't actually admit to it. But I actually like it.

Secondly, I do actually believe in it, and it frustrates me when I feel like people are behaving in a self-satisfied, self-justified manner. Injustice bothers me a great deal, and when I see people getting defended for their illegal activities it annoys me. I feel that Kim Dotcom is getting a lot of unjustified support from people who are seeking to rationalize or otherwise legitimize their own activities; in reality, the guy wasn't "one of us" but rather someone who was deeply involved in the acquisition, purchasing, and selling of illegal content, as demonstrated by the various internal emails in the inditment. Likewise, I find the whole "The US is the world police" a bit tiresome; the US does bad things, to be sure, but like with everything, good things are ignored and forgotten while bad things (even things that are good, but are percieved to be bad) are trumpted to the high heavens. I feel that the prosecution of Dotcom was quite reasonable, especially given that if the US really wanted to, they could probably kidnap him and drag him back to the US. Goodness knows the Israelis have done it in the past, and if the US government really was the arm of the MPAA/RIAA, that would have happened. A lot of people lack perspective on issues.

Thirdly, I am a very analytical person, so when people talk about stuff, I want to be -correct-, not merely win the argument. It has actually grown a bit tiresome here because most of the people here don't actually care about being factually correct, which makes for very boring arguments. You'll notice that my tone tends to change a great deal when someone presents actual analysis that interests me, rather than calling people "insipid morons", which is catharic.

Fourth, I am a biomedical engineer by training, and engineers solve problems. Patents for new technologies are a big part of modern society, and a lot of people don't really appreciate what patents do or why they're important. As someone who deals with intellectual property every day as part of my job (I worked for Lionbridge as a contractor for Hewlett Packard, and then later went to work for Energ2), I came to understand what IP is and why it is important a great deal more from the inside. However, I had always had an appreciation for it, even back in college.

Fifth, my current "job" is game design, which is all IP, and very heavily copyright based - you cannot patent game rules, after all, and you cannot copyright them either, so the only thing you actually own as a game designer is presentation. Even still IP is vitally important to the industry. Wizards of the Coast is actually quite nice about copyrights - they let fansites exist, and only really get annoyed when you use their IP to promote yourself. While they don't like leaks of their cards before they're made (and the time that someone leaked playtest cards (and the someone who spread them advertised his store in his posts...) they sent the lawyers out after them) they're generally pretty laid back about fan sites, which I generally approve of. Unfortunately, they still suffer a great deal from piracy, and while I feel that they haven't really entered the 21st century, they are TRYING. I don't work for WotC (I am self employed) but I understand why IP is important - because without IP, people simply could not design games for a living. There's really nothing preventing people from printing off their own Magic cards save for the vague understanding that it is wrong.

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For many people the argument isn't only that of piracy, but Their Rights vs Our Rights. Their being the political-corporate figures that enforce copyright. It has already been shown how copyright can be used to censor free speech. Is increased network monitoring, rouge international treaties, propagation of consumer rights restricting DRM, widespread collusion between private and federal agencies in favor of more corporate rights and copyright, worth protecting a small percentage of already millionaires property?

People may be surprised to learn that while I am pro-IP, I am hardly uncritical of the system. The difference is that I feel that the flaws are best addressed in different ways. The primary problem with patents actually doesn't even lie in patent law; it lies mostly in the patent office, the authority in charge of giving out patents (and the US patent office is not alone in this). They give out many invalid, overbroad patents, which is the source of much litigation. If there was a change in the law, I feel that the proper approach would be a stricter statute of limitations which prevents some of the more opportunistic lurker lawsuits which occur.

Copyright law, conversely, is actually pretty good. The biggest problem with copyright law right now isn't actually enforcement, but rather length; I feel that 20-30 years is the proper length. Many people blame the US for the extremely long terms, but in actuality it was Europe that pressured the US into lifelong copyright terms, not the other way around. Blame where blame is due and all that. I do feel that some of the applications of the DMCA are messed up, but the biggest problem actually lies in lack of enforcement on false DMCA claims - if they actually nailed lawyers and their masters for filing false DMCA requests, then we would see a lot less abuse of the system. Sadly, they do not. The problem, though, doesn't lie in the DMCA but rather in the selective application of laws that punish people for abusing the law, DMCA included. I feel that in recent times lawyers have gained a lot of unwarranted power, and the fact that politicians listen to lawyers when they write laws (and actually, mostly have the lawyers themselves write them) is a big part of the problem.

I will note that I disapprove of the various stupidity that goes on with ex-politicians lobbying, and I dislike special interest groups in general - that is ALL special interest groups, unless you count the ACLU as one, in which case I'm good with them. Pretty much all the rest of them are just out for themselves at the expense of everyone else, and yes, that includes the various pro-disability groups. I actually have far more contact with politicians than most would imagine; my mother has worked for the state of Oregon for well over a decade now, and I get to hear all kinds of fun stories I can't really share. The funny thing is that the view from the inside sort of reveals the obvious - the actual problem with many politicians is a combination of entitlement and ignorance, not actual malice. The Dunning-Kruger effect is in evidence in most of them. I have met a few of the local politicians, and when I was a kid I actually had a federal judge as a tee-ball coach. The reality is that most of them are decent people who do the best they can, but the best they can isn't always very good (though the judge is quite competent, and I think Senator Wyden is quite popular amongst most people here - even he does bad things though, like the whole timber payments program being further extended, which I've criticized him about to his face before. He sort of agrees, but he feels like people are unwilling to take responsibility for themselves (these people, ironically, mostly vote against him, being rural voters and him a liberal democrat) so he feels obligated to do so).

I oppose warrantless wiretapping. I also oppose the RIAA/MPAA being involved in filtering. Really, I'm generally opposed to filtering, though if you know, specifically, that the content is illegal, I think that it is reasonable - but this can be really difficult to determine and keeping a coherent list together is a lot of work. You'd probably need a specific agency that did it, it couldn't be a government agency, but it would probably get money from some sort of kickback from the entertainment industry, via taxes or otherwise. And yes, I have been opposed to most of these stupid treaties.

Now, seeing as one of the authors of the study has responded to my criticisms, I suppose it is only right for me to write a considered response back.

How come in these surveys there's never a distinction made between current music and "old music from the 60s and 70s"? Copyright term is never questioned and is assumed to not be a factor in determining if it's OK to share or not.

The most pirated files are always recent files, not old ones. The older it is, the less pirated it tends to be, and the leading item is always something new and recent - big summer blockbusters, new CDs, ect.

This is for two reasons:

1) The older it is, the more likely you are to already have it.

2) There is increased interest in new things compared to old things.

Honest question: How do you know that? Was there another survey or something?

May I ask why, personally, you appear so against piracy? Do you feel it negatively effects more than just the copyright holders and artist?

I'm not TD, but I've argued in the past that it does influence society in long term negative ways. It breeds a culture of disrespect, and lack of trust. The foundational principles to any viable society.

Looking through the pdf there's no info on how old this data is or it's trends and I saw nothing obvious in the References. First off, I'll assume the percentages on based on households. Even then, I find the 82% value high. I cut the cord about 6 months ago and have known many others who have in the last 1-2 years. Comcast and the like have been raising rates at record setting pace because they're losing customers but still need to meet shareholder expectations. Whether it's piracy, the economy or more people living under the same roof would be interesting to know.

With regard to music, as someone who's nearing 40 I haven't heard much new music on the airwaves that I would buy much less listen to again. Movies less so but mostly renters. Many movies that I would see in a theater are straight to video released or shown in obscure distant theaters for a limited time. Both industries are too caught up in 18-30whatever demographic. My mom who's partly retired has a hard time finding shows and movies to watch (older folk aren't interested in sexual references EVERY episode!). There's money to be made off people over 40. Is the BBC the only one interested or have all the talented writers died off?

Radio DJ's used to discover new music and share it with the public. Now it's the same 15 songs played 15 times daily. The movie industry is more interested in renting equipment to their sister company, writing it off a loss twice and claiming a loss on every movie than discovering quality writers or developing talent.

These industries want someone to blame and pirates are an easy target.

Another detail… Contra Tim Lee's otherwise excellent overview, Google did not 'commission' the study. We proposed it and they provided a research grant with the understanding that we would do it. That may seem like a fine point, but in practice it meant that they took a completely hands off approach. We have opinions, and some of these are visible in the analysis, but you can be your own judge as to whether the analysis follows an 'agenda' or--as best we could--the data. In my view the results do not paint a particularly Google friendly view of the world, but whether they do or not was not our concern.

May I ask why, personally, you appear so against piracy? Do you feel it negatively effects more than just the copyright holders and artist?

I'm not TD, but I've argued in the past that it does influence society in long term negative ways. It breeds a culture of disrespect, and lack of trust. The foundational principles to any viable society.

That's not really a function or result of piracy.

That's caused by "bad laws" and "unaccountable governments".

sane copyright laws would fix it. So too would accountable public officials and a hard line on corruption and cronyism in government.

Just look at the respect and trust many have for the police and law enforcement today, or indeed for the government. It's not restricted to just copyright, it's the whole lot, and copyright is just one example of this.

You want to fix it, you have to fix the causes, not the symptoms. If I have a rusty nail sticking up in my floor, do I just take painkillers and get tetanus shots every time I step on it, OR do I deal with the nail? In fact, in medicine I can only think of one illness that's had it's fatality level significantly reduced by treating the symptoms and not the disease (and note, I'm not a doctor) and that's Cholera, where the fatality vector was the dehydration.

I'm a Luddite when it comes to downloading; I have no idea how to upload or download from torrent sites, so I don't.

That said, let me throw out a theory, and you tell me whether I'm right or wrong.

Most of us have bought a car from a car dealer, and none of us have bought that car without a test drive. We drive the car, and then the dealership (in the person of the car salesman) makes sure we give the car back. All of us have tried on clothes in a dressing room; and always near the dressing room is a store employee whose job it is to make sure that we're seen carrying out, every garment that we are seen carrying in.

The car dealer's lawyer, or the clothing-store's lawyer, might hypothetically fuss about issues of ownership v. possession, but they are overruled by management because this is such a great sales tool. PROVIDED THAT the seller gets the goods back from the customer.

My theory is that downloading a song you haven't bought, and listening to the song that you downloaded, is no different from trying on clothes in a dressing room, or test-driving a car. The key difference, the reason for all the yelling and screaming, is that with the music, the seller doesn't know that you're listening to the song, and he doesn't know whether you delete the file afterward, keep the file you haven't paid for, or go to Amazon and buy the song that is already on your hard drive. In short, what the music labels call "stealing" is nothing more than subverting their self-serving control system that forces you to pay for junk you wind up not wanting, so long as you play by their rules.

I presume that it's impossible to test-drive a car and then steal the car, so there are no statistics on such a thing happening. Statistics say that people shoplift from dressing rooms, but not often. I extrapolate from this that few people download a song, like the song, decide to keep it, can afford to buy it, but don't buy it. Only in these few cases would I say that the downloaders have "stolen" the song.

May I ask why, personally, you appear so against piracy? Do you feel it negatively effects more than just the copyright holders and artist?

I'm not TD, but I've argued in the past that it does influence society in long term negative ways. It breeds a culture of disrespect, and lack of trust. The foundational principles to any viable society.

That's not really a function or result of piracy.

That's caused by "bad laws" and "unaccountable governments".

Well see now that's the "us vs them" argument, with "them" always being some big, impersonal institution, and "us" is obvious. Problem is, as I've pointed out in the past that piracy is a systemic phenomenon that affects the small creator as much (if not more so) as it does the big. As anecdotal as it is, I've seen small content creators get pirated, and to add insult to injury, taunted to boot, in a "you can't catch me" fashion.

Not to try and make a point one way or the other, but this is one of the things I like about having a real music store in town. They have a player and a set of cans in the shop, and let you try before you buy.

May I ask why, personally, you appear so against piracy? Do you feel it negatively effects more than just the copyright holders and artist?

I'm not TD, but I've argued in the past that it does influence society in long term negative ways. It breeds a culture of disrespect, and lack of trust. The foundational principles to any viable society.

Your statement presumes that the copyright holders are worthy of respect, and so the downloaders who disregard the copyright owners' wishes have done them wrong.

What the downloaders actually do, is no different from poaching -- taking food that belongs to a nobleman who doesn't need it and will never miss it. But poaching always was excessively punished because the nobleman had the power and the poacher didn't.

You think the analogy absurd? In medieval society, there was no way that a peasant, if accused of something by a nobleman, could question the truthfulness of what the nobleman said. Look how the DMCA lets copyright owners make accusations of infringement, with no perjury penalty.

In medieval society, the penalty for poaching was death. I'd say that a penalty of $150,000 per copyright infringement is damned close to that.

Timothy B. Lee / Timothy covers tech policy for Ars, with a particular focus on patent and copyright law, privacy, free speech, and open government. His writing has appeared in Slate, Reason, Wired, and the New York Times.